Poor Torvy!

I thought I'd publish a cheerful photo to prove he isn't always downhearted! This was taking while clowning around on holiday recently in Mallorca.

Torvy has been taking a great deal of strain lately. He has been the victim of a sustained campaign of bullying unlrelated to the many that have gone before.

It started on his paper round. A kid who lived along his route started threatening to do him harm if he showed his face in that area again. We phoned the police, but they told us that they could only intervene if the child actually did him physical harm. Well excuse me for not wanting to hold out for an actionable offence! Torvy switched rounds and the kid who took over from him got punched in the face by the kid on his first time out.

Then the kid identified Torvy at school and started making his life a misery there. Threatening him with beatings and shoving him around. The new paper round is still within sight of the old one, and Torvy reached the point of being in stark terror of going out to do his round in case the child saw him and decided to follow him home. He was too afraid to report it through the appropriate channels at school for fear of reprisals.

Today he finally went and reported it, and I backed it up with a call from home. He was able to identify the child from the school's photo database. Let's hope there is some success as a consequence.